broom's blog

An American Weird Game

Learned that on today’s FreeWheel 5-year anniversary party(hooray~)

Get an inflated balloon. Bite a small hole on it do air can come out, then immediately put your mouth on the hole and inhale as much as possible. Now SPEAK! You will find your voice becomes very weird… Like a baby.

It’s probably because the balloon increased the air pressure in your lung. But it remains mystery to me that how Americans invented this game and why it’s popular here…

Btw, Chris showed us he can bite balloon to make it explode one after another, like nothing happened! Monster!

—

Talked with a few ppl, and found the funny voice was not from pressure, but from Helium. See here.

My Wife is Young

2 ppl came to my place today to check bills. Xw was at home.

They introduced themselves, blar blar blar. But xw couldn’t understand them well.

So they asked: “Are your parents at home?”

PARENTS? REALLY?

Skyrim All Achievements Done

Race: Khajit, Level: 50, Main Combat style: archery/sneak, Game time: ~150 hours.

skyrim

It’s no doubt Game of The Year for 2011. Many many awards. And the “arrow in the knee” meme was a quite unique phenomenon for a video game. I guess most ppl who used this joke never played Skyrim, lol.

This was actually my first time to finish a “sandbox” style game. This game style tries to give player as much freedom as possible. Skyrim did give you FREEDOM. There are 9 cities in the world map, except the first one (Whiterun), you can visit the other 8 cities in any order, any time! And the huge huge world map is full of villages, caves, ruins and tasks. There is an achievement for “discover 100 places” but it was done in a pretty early stage. I guess the total number of places may be around 300! And sometimes I got over 20 open tasks and 4 to 5 story lines going on simultaneously. I’ve never played a game with so many free choices. If you play it in a mood of “finishing tasks quickly”, it would make you anxious and a little bit uncomfortable. But once you stop rushing and begin to wander on this huge land, you will immediately feel the pleasure. Every character has his/her background and small story; numerous and various animals running around; new tasks come in and open tasks are closed like a flow; you’re the hero and resolve every difficulty on this cold continent. It’s a ridiculously addictive experience.

Don’t be too critical to its fighting style. It’s shooting(archery) can’t compare with real shooting game, and its action combat is far from a real action game too. The spirit here is possibilities. Many skills can be combined in any way. Lots of interesting combat style can be created.

The last achievement I got was “Reach level 50”. All other achievements were done at level 43. Then I tried to level fast, by pickpocketing every person I met, enchanting lots of junk weapons, spending money to train skills, etc. The only missable achievement is “Get 15 daedric artifacts”, because you need to choose the right option in every daedric quest. Just remember to follow those evil god’s instructions then you will get all those artifacts.

Btw, I’m going to trade in the game (XBox version) this week. Let me know if anyone wants to buy it…

iPhone is a life changing gadget

I started to use iPhone after moving to NYC. It has been 2 months. I want to say it really changed some part of life.

First, I rarely open my laptop at home now. Almost all casual tasks can be done on iPhone, with an as good or even better user experience. Email, twitter, IM, video call, search, browse web, ebooks, a little bit music sometimes… All well supported by iPhone. The only chance I need to open laptop is for playing some pirated movies, actually. Or serious works like reading a long doc, but that’s more of an office case.

Second, I’m even more closely bound to Internet now. I have been a heavy user of Smart Phone (if BlackBerry can count :/) for years. However it was in China and it was stupid BlackBerry and poor 2g network. The bandwidth and the fucking GFW limited my mobile digital life to an eunuch level. Now, welcome to Zion… Unfortunately, or fortunately, I still have 1.5 hours Internet-free time each weekday because of subway. But it’s definitely not iPhone-free. Kindle app and Podcaster are my company.

Last word: I used an Android phone in US for a few months. It’s not the same thing. User experience matters. It determines whether you want to stick to phone or open a laptop, though the difference is hard to be measured.

Snow, Prospect Park Lake

It was snowing yesterday. We went to Prospect Park to check snow view. Prospect Park is pretty famous in Brooklyn, designed by the same designer of Manhattan Central Park.

Last summer I came to Prospect Park once with Gregory, for a musical event in memorial of Michael Jackson. There was a huge grass field, loud music and dancing crowds.

This time is a totally different view. Xw and I entered from a small gate from west. Soon we hit a big lake with countless birds. There are wild geese, wild ducks, seagulls, a kind of small black bird, even some swans! Those birds are not afraid of people. When we walk close to the water, some birds swam to us too. Maybe they thought we were going to feed them. I felt sorry we didn’t bring any food. Most birds are comfortable for us to get as close as 1 meter. When we approached even closer, they walked away too. Seems 1 meter is their “safe distance”.

Lots of kids were playing on slopes in the park. Riding various “snow boards” to slide down, laughing and screaming. We saw some kids sit or laid in small “carts” and fathers were dragging them in the park, very cute.